Topics in the Grammar of French Sign Language (LSF)

    In LSF, the relative pronoun person-cl can modify both singular and plural heads, as shown in the following examples.

 

                                                       rel

       a. ix₁ prefer little girl person-cl pet dog                                  singular

       'I prefer the little girl, who pets the dog.'

 

 

 

 

 

                                                        rel

       b. ix₃ meet-pl girl-pl person-cl-pl play-pl-circle hopscotch       plural

       ‘She (Mary) met the girls who were playing hopscotch.’                              (Hauser, 2019)

 

 

 

 

 

When inflected for plural, person-cl is realized multiple times, either with one or with two hands alternating.

 

 

The second manual relative pronoun, pi, cannot modify a plural head. When the head is plural, pi has to be combined with the signs for area, group or the quantifier all, as in the following example. In any case, pi cannot be inflected for plural.

 

                                 rel

        meet-pl girl all pi play-pl hopscotch

       ‘She met all the girls who were playing hopscotch.’                                      (Hauser, 2019)